DadsFam Backups

DadsFam Backups keeps a safety net under your WordPress site. Back up your database and files whenever you like, or set a schedule and forget about it. When something goes wrong, restore in a few clicks.

It’s built for real-world hosting. Big sites usually choke other backup plugins because PHP runs out of time or memory halfway through. DadsFam Backups works in small, resumable steps instead — so a backup that’s too big to finish in one go simply picks up where it left off until it’s done.

What you get (free)

• Full backups — database + plugins, themes, uploads, and the rest of wp-content. Pick exactly what to include.
• Resumable engine — large sites back up in bounded chunks and never time out.
• One-click restore — restore the database, files, or both, right from the dashboard.
• Scheduled backups — daily, weekly or monthly at a time you choose. No server cron setup needed; it runs through WordPress and heals its own schedule.
• Smart retention — automatically keep only the most recent N backups.
• Exclusions — skip caches, node_modules, logs and anything else with simple patterns.
• Email notifications — get told when a backup finishes or fails.
• Activity log — a clear history of every backup, restore and scheduled run.
• Secure storage — backups live in a protected folder (no public web access) and downloads are nonce + capability protected.
• Off-site copies to Google Drive or OneDrive — connect an account in one click and every backup gets a second home. Uploads are resumable and continue in the background, so a big archive finishes even on a slow shared host.
• Restore from the cloud — lost the server, or deleted the local copy? Pick an off-site backup and it is pulled back onto your site, resuming by itself if the connection drops. Then restore it normally.

Built honestly

No nag screens, no crippled free version, no surprise server configuration. The free plugin really backs up and really restores your whole site.

Going further with Pro

An optional commercial add-on, DadsFam Backups Pro, adds more off-site destinations (Amazon S3 and S3-compatible, FTP/FTPS, SFTP), encrypted off-site copies and advanced schedules. It is a separate plugin and is not required — Google Drive, OneDrive and cloud restore are all part of this plugin. Pro is at plugins.dadsfam.co.za.

External services

Connecting Google Drive or OneDrive is optional and nothing is sent anywhere until you connect an account.

When you do, this plugin uses the DadsFam connection service at https://connect.dadsfam.co.za to handle the sign-in. You are sent there to approve access, and it returns a one-time code that this site swaps for an access token server-to-server, so the token never travels through your browser. The service receives the provider you chose and the address to send you back to. Terms of use and privacy policy: dadsfam.co.za/privacy-policy and plugins.dadsfam.co.za/privacy-policy.

Once connected, your site talks directly to Google (googleapis.com) or Microsoft (graph.microsoft.com) to upload and download your backups. Nothing passes through DadsFam.

A word about PRO

Right, let me be straight with you, because I hate being sold to as much as you do.

Everything above is free and it stays free. Backing your site up on a schedule, restoring it, cloning it to a new domain, downloading the archive, verifying every backup is not corrupt — none of those are premium features. Those are things a backup plugin should just do, and if I put them behind a paywall I would be taking the mickey.

There is a PRO add-on. It exists because I am a dad in Cape Town, and this is one of the things that puts food on the table at my house. That is the honest reason. Not “unlock your potential”, not “supercharge your workflow”. Just: if this plugin saved your site and you can spare it, PRO helps me keep building.

What PRO adds is the stuff you only want once your backups need to live somewhere other than the same server as your site — sending each one off to Amazon S3, an FTP or SFTP box, Google Drive or OneDrive, encrypting those off-site copies, keeping a set number of them out there, and running on a tighter schedule. That is convenience and peace of mind. It is not the plugin working properly, because the plugin already works properly.

So if the free one does everything you need, brilliant. Genuinely. Use it, and I hope it saves you the afternoon nobody wants — the one where the site is gone and there is no backup. If you get to the point where off-site copies would let you sleep easier, PRO is at plugins.dadsfam.co.za.

Either way, thanks for using something I built. — Zak, DadsFam

PRO adds:

• Off-site backups to Amazon S3 and S3-compatible storage (Wasabi, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO)
• FTP, FTPS and SFTP destinations
• Google Drive and OneDrive
• Encrypted off-site copies
• Remote retention — keep a set number of backups off-site
• More frequent, advanced backup schedules